


came out of the woods by choice

by savorycheeks



Series: share your road [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dating, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 12:58:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5829835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savorycheeks/pseuds/savorycheeks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part two of what is probably only going to become even MORE JediStormPilot rom-com nonsense. Reading part one is, you can guess, recommended, but it's not strictly necessary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	came out of the woods by choice

Finn had been the one to ask her, since they were already close friends. Poe decided early in the planning stages that it might be a little overwhelming for Rey to be approached by two people simultaneously asking her on what--they assumed--was probably her first date. 

So Finn asked, and without revealing too many of the details--"Did she seem freaked out by going out with both of us?” “No! I swear, she looked like I just offered her, I don’t know, some kind of _challenge_. Like, in a good way.”--he explained to Poe that she’d said yes, and they would all be meeting for lunch later in the week. 

“She asked what the difference was between this and all the other times we’ve had lunch together.” Finn had said.

“What did you say?”

“I told her that this time… she’d know we wanted to date her?”

“And what did she say?”

“‘Dating is weird.’ Direct quote.” 

“No argument here, buddy.” 

Later, Poe had approached Rey--who, he was glad to say, seemed pleased to see him--and asked if she’d have any interest in taking an X-Wing out to learn the ropes. After hearing so much about the daring Jakku escape, which Finn recounted with very little provocation for anyone who would listen, he’d been dying to see her in action, the Resistance’s newest prodigy. 

His ulterior motive was to have a little one-on-one time with her, so all three of them would have some familiarity before The Date. 

She was enthusiastically for the idea, so the day arrived, and they flew together, Poe sending obstacles and flight patterns from his own cockpit to her on-board display. She completed all of them impressively, usually on the first try. Whenever Rey performed some delicate turn too late or fired a shot too early she seemed, to Poe, almost unreasonably angry, and the first couple of times it happened he had tried to talk her down before she made another attempt. But, he realized, even with her grunts of frustration, when she made a second attempt, she _learned_. He didn’t need to teach her much of anything, he realized. She was teaching herself.

Poe and Rey returned to the hanger, sweaty from exertion in cramped quarters and babbling about the fuel capacity of various fighters. Standing in the doorway with a shy grin, Finn held several small containers that, even from ten feet off, smelled _amazing_. 

 

\---

 

“Wait, you had the OmniPilot Mark-4 simulator?!” Poe is pretty sure his grin is showcasing an embarrassing amount of food in his teeth, but he can’t bring himself to care, because he and Rey had the same flight simulator!

“Yeah! I pulled it off an old wreck a few years back, fixed it up. Well, practically re-built it is more like it.” Rey’s speaks quickly around a mouthful of dumplings. “I flew every program it had, under every combination of conditions I could put together.”

The three of them, her and Finn and Poe are sitting in the hangar on top of his X-Wing, passing containers of their packed lunch around. Poe, seated next to her, their feet dangling off the side, was sure she must have flown before, if not a modern X-Wing, maybe a discontinued model or an old A-Wing. It was unlikely that such a thing would find its way to the surface of Jakku in a functional state, though stranger things--he knows very well--have happened.

But the truth is even more unbelievable, as far as Poe is concerned. That the two of them, planets and _systems_ apart, had this one thing in common.

“That’s crazy! I had one of those as a kid! Mom got it for me, when I was…” Poe shakes his head, “Krif, probably before you were even born.” And he is _not_ going to obsess about that right now. 

“No way!” Rey squeals, and a few noodles fall from her fork onto the windshield of Poe’s baby. 

Poe laughs and grabs a napkin to clean it up. As he wipes away the remaining sauce residue, he continues, “Yeah, she would take me up in her old A-wing, but I was always bugging her for more, so I’m pretty sure she got me that flight-sim just to shut me up.” He tosses the wadded up napkin in the general direction of a small trashcan on the floor below them. It misses by a meter or so, and BB-8 rolls up almost instantly, small irritated beeps sounding in the hanger as it fetches the garbage and tosses the mess away with one of the longer appendages extending from its spherical body.

“Sorry, buddy!” shouts Poe. A chirp of forgiveness answers him, and the droid rolls away to continue maintenance scans.

“I can’t imagine that worked,” says a smiling Finn, who is leaning back against one of the fighter’s wings, his feet kicked up on her hull and a half-eaten fried-veggie roll in his hand. 

“Shutting me up? Hah, of course not. If anything, once I saw how many different things I _could_ fly, I just wanted to do it more. Still, I ran that thing into the ground.” He smiles at the fond memories, the pain of remembering his mother having long since faded into a dull ache, not the stinging, sharp pang it once was.

“Is that when you decided to be a pilot?” asks Rey, the kicking of her dangling feet slowing as she focuses her attention on Poe.

“Well, the simulator helped, but the flying bug is completely inherited from my mom.” Pride swells in his chest. “Not to brag, but she was… kind of a big deal in the Rebellion.” 

Finn snorts, “Big deal like her hot-shot son?”

“I’m serious!” Poe shoots back. “She was in the battle of Endor, and she flew missions with _General Organa_ , back when they still called her Princess. Much cooler than me.”

“Okay, okay,” Finn raises his hands in surrender, “I rescind my teasing! But you’re still a hot-shot.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Did you say I’m hot?” he says with the cheesiest smirk his can muster, and Finn licks his lips. Poe is pretty sure it was actually totally unconscious on Finn’s part, but it is still _distracting_.

“Anyway, Rey, that simulator ain’t half bad! It’s no wonder you did so well your first time out.” He grabs at a new container and digs around, looking for more pea-pods. “Pretty soon you’ll be flying circles around me.”

Rey leans, nudging Poe’s shoulder with her own, playfully. “I don’t know about that, flyboy,” the way she says it makes it pretty clear that she wouldn’t exactly be surprised, and Poe somehow finds that even more endearing. “The General speaks very highly of you.” 

Poe looks down, a failed attempt to hide the blush that rises to his cheeks. He can’t help it; Leia Organa turns him into new recruit all over again, stumbling over himself to win her approval.

“When am I gonna get you in one of these cockpits, Finn?” Poe asks, diverting attention from himself.

“Yeah!” says Rey, conveniently.

“Aw, I don't know,” replies Finn, shrugging, “I’m just not the pilot type.”

Poe rolls his eyes and points his fork in Finn’s direction. “And I'm not a sharpshooter, but I still know how to hold a blaster.” He makes ‘pew-pew’ noises to emphasize his point.

Finn laughs, just a puff of air and a flash of teeth, with a wrinkle forming at the bridge of his nose that Poe wants to frame and hang on the wall of the nearest Unbearably Cute museum.

The expression fades, a grim tinge clouding his eyes before he leans back again, his face relaxing. Poe considers, but decides not to pry.

“Point taken,” Finn says, resigned. “Seems like ‘little bit of everything’ is the job description for you Resistance types.”

“Yeah well, you’re one of _us_ filthy rebel scum now, so you you may as well get used to it.” 

Rey guffaws and kicks at Poe’s feet. “Dream on!” she chortles, “You wouldn’t know filthy if you stepped in Bantha dung. I doubt anyone on this base has gone more than what, two weeks, maybe a month without a shower?”

“Oh, Miss Dry-Heat Quarterly wants to give us a lesson in body odor?” Poe sets his food down and makes of show of smelling his own flight-suit. “I don’t know, that cockpit gets pretty rank after a few hours of recycled air…”

Rey levels him a look that is decidedly unimpressed. “When you’ve been holed up in a sun-baked AT-AT hull for the better part of a week, you can lecture me on sealed environments, Mr. Dameron.”

Poe winces comically, cowering from Rey in mock disgust as she points an armpit towards him aggressively.

“Oh, no, oooooh no,” says Finn with obvious arrogance as he sits up. “Your cushy resistance bases and your… _exfoliating_ desert locales have nothing--I repeat, nothing, on the First Order.”

Rey and Poe are clearly doubtful. Rey scoffs.

“You can’t tell me there aren’t showers. Hell, even the armor stays perfectly shiny and white.”

“Oh, there are showers, and they are necessary. Let me ask you this: Have you ever worn full Stormtrooper armor?”

Poe and Rey shake their heads. 

“Exactly, because if you had, you would know that they are practically vacuum-sealed. Oh sure, sweat is wicked away from the surface of the skin to avoid irritation, but the smell. It just accumulates and accumulates until you peel the whole thing off and send it to cleaning detail.”

“Okay, I’m sure you don’t smell like Yavin daisies, but I don’t think…” Poe begins

“I’m not done. So, after a couple hours of training, even a whole day of high-exertion simulations. It’s bad, but you know, that’s what showers are for. No big deal, right?”

“Right.” says Rey.

“Yeah, but then you have a multi-day, real-conditions training excursion with the whole unit. Three days, hot sun, hours-long combat and maneuvering, never taking the armor off. Sleeping in that stuff, which is a whole other adventure-- anyway, then it’s over, and you’re exhausted and all you want to do is crawl into your bunk, but first you gotta get out of this positively rancid suit.”

“Okay, that doesn’t sound great.”

“Yeah, you, _and_ 50 of your fellow troopers, releasing three days of stench at the same time, in the same barracks. I swear on the Force, four guys fainted.”

Rey’s mouth drops open, shocked and suddenly gasping with laughter. “That’s dis-- disgusting!” she chokes out, beyond delighted.

“Wow,” says Poe, settling his own fit of giggles. “Okay, yeah, you win.”

Finn’s laughing a little himself now, caught up in the infectious mood. “I mean, you know why Phasma never takes her armor off? They say if she did it’d qualify as a level-5 biochemical weapon. Can’t risk it.”

Losing his composure entirely, Finn practically cackles at his own joke, and Poe and Rey can’t help but follow, sputtering and doubling over each other with howling laughter until they’re breathless.

“Anyway…” says Poe, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye and catching his breath. “Is everyone done with lunch? I’m sure one of us is late for something by now,” and Poe is only pretty certain it’s not him.

“Yeah, I’m stuffed,” says Finn, standing on the wing and gathering containers and utensils. 

“I’m supposed to meet with Luke soon,” says Rey, speaking to both of them but looking at Poe, her face inches from his, “but we should do this again.” 

“Yeah?” Poe finds that the hope in his question in genuine, not only loving the way Rey makes Finn light up, but the way she makes his chest go tight, breathing shallow like he’s bracing for a gravity shift. 

She’s a coil, a loaded spring, he realizes. Potential energy stored up on a barren planet for over a decade, and now she’s bursting with it, and Poe finds it exhilarating.

Rey reaches around Poe’s head and she’s pulling him to her by the back of his neck, and before he has a moment to process it, her lips meet his. They’re tight, at first, like the tension in his stomach, but she softens to him, angling her body closer and applying the lightest suction to his lower lip. 

And Poe can’t help but follow her, at first, when she pulls away. He rests a hand on her knee, and she tenses, almost imperceptibly, but then she’s smiling that big smile of hers that scrunches her whole face. Poe feels blinded for a moment, dazed.

These two, he thinks, are deadly.

“Yeah, I like this,” says Rey, and Finn is beaming at both of them when they look back. “This was a good date.”

**Author's Note:**

> title from the same song as before, because honestly, titles are the worst.


End file.
